


Bagels

by Sunhawk16



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, POV Heero Yuy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-13 06:37:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12978219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunhawk16/pseuds/Sunhawk16
Summary: Notes are at the end if you don't want spoilers.





	Bagels

**Author's Note:**

> Notes are at the end if you don't want spoilers.

I knew where to find him that day even though he put some effort into covering up. It wasn’t much of an effort; the little note about going for bagels was just lame… we don’t even eat bagels. But I’d been watching for something all day, because… the date was one I kept in memory even closer than the anniversary of the end of the Eve war. 

I didn’t rush to the cemetery, but I did follow him there. It had taken seven years for him to finally make the trip, and while I intended to be there for him, I also intended to give him the space to finally… hopefully… make his peace. 

I found him, right where I’d been sure he’d be and I just stood on the sidewalk and watched him stand for a bit, before deciding that I wasn’t going to interrupt anything more than staring.

I walked slowly across the grass, making sure he heard me coming, and couldn’t help but think the bright, clear spring day was inappropriate to the moment. 

‘It should be raining,’ he said when I moved in beside him, accepting my presence into his moment without rancor. There was a single white carnation lying on the headstone, but the stem was broken. It seemed appropriate somehow, in a sad sort of way. I tilted my head back and looked up at the sky.

‘I know,’ was all I could find to say. 

He was quiet for a bit, just staring at that headstone, reaching out eventually and trying to align the stem of the flower, looking somehow embarrassed at the physical sign of his fidgeting. He squatted down rather abruptly and began tracing the letters of Hilde’s name with a touch that barely connected. 

‘I thought I’d be able to cry,’ he said softly, not looking at me. ‘But I can’t. I still can’t.’

I reached out and let my fingers stroke over his hair once, encouraging without breaking into his thoughts, because I wasn’t entirely sure who he was talking to. 

‘I’ve been so angry at her for so long… I can’t seem to feel anything else.’

He left off his tracing, and his hand curled into a fist and for a moment I was afraid his temper was going to get the better of him, but the punch was just a tap centered on the graven doves. 

‘I could hate her for doing this to me,’ he said, voice starting to twist on the confession and he stopped for a bit, his fist beginning a rhythmic little thumping against the stone. I shoved my hands into my jeans pockets to keep from pulling him to his feet and away from the headstone. 

‘Such a fucking waste!’ he suddenly snarled and the next thump of his fist was more… firm. He stopped, pulling his hand back and leaned forward against his knees, looking very much like he was starting to hunch in on himself. 

We were quiet for a very long time and somewhere in the trees, a robin began to sing. I looked out across the rolling hills of the cemetery and gave him the moment. 

When he spoke again, he’d calmed the snarl from his voice and just sounded… tired. ‘She never gave it a chance.’ Space or not, the tone of his voice was something I couldn’t ignore and I knelt down beside him, wrapping a sheltering arm around his shoulders. 

‘Duo…’ I began; unsure of my welcome, but he just sighed and leaned his head against my shoulder.

‘It seems so long ago now,’ he whispered, voice a sigh like water breaking over a damn. ‘I look back and I… I just can’t even remember ever feeling the way we did. The war was a… a hard thing to get over, you know? She and I tried to help each other, but everything seemed so hopeless somehow. But from here… looking back… it doesn’t even look the same. I can’t explain it…’

‘Perspective?’ I tried, gently kissing the top of his head where he rested against me. 

‘Something like that,’ he granted, but I could tell he wasn’t entirely happy with the phrasing and he grew quiet. It made me doubt that I should have spoken. I was quiet with him and just let him sort it out. 

His fingers lifted again, drawn back to the stone and picked up the trace on the ‘S’. 

‘I know I was depressed back then, and I know she was too… I remember… I remember dark times. I know that. I remember not knowing what to do with myself and I remember just wanting it all to go away, but… how do you just stop trying?’

I squeezed him tight. ‘I don’t know, love. I really just don’t know.’

His hand splayed out across the surface of the headstone, as though trying to hide the name and deny its existence. Deny it all. 

He pushed then, and we came to our feet, I wasn’t sure if I should let him go, but he turned to wrap his arms around my waist and bury his face against my neck, so I wrapped him up close. 

‘Life…’ he whispered. ‘She missed so damn much of it. Heero, she wasn’t even twenty-one. We were just kids and she just threw it all away. Just a damn baby and she didn’t have a clue what the future might have held. She gave it all away without even knowing what it was.’

I wanted to make excuses for her, wanted to lie somehow and make it an easier thing to bear, but anything I could have said would have just been hollow and Duo deserved better. So I just held him.

‘I thought…’ he began, and that twist was back in his voice. ‘I thought I was ready to forgive her… but I’m not. She never really tried. There was always a why not, but never a why.’

He sighed heavily then, for her or for himself, I couldn’t really tell. Or maybe just for still-born possibilities. 

Behind him, the wind blew the carnation off the headstone and tumbled it across the grass. He turned us away from that place and took us home without looking back. 

I had thought what he needed to find within himself was forgiveness, but maybe he would be better served by forgetfulness. 

They say that as long as there is life there is hope. Hilde chose to give up on hope, to give up on the future, give up on herself. I didn’t know how to tell Duo to forgive that when… it wasn’t something I could do myself.

**Author's Note:**

> Hilde killed herself in the past and this is Duo trying to deal with it. Heero POV. I'll be blunt here... this was written years and years ago in response to a bit of internet drama. My first encounter with using implications on-line and then the 'vanishing' trick to gain attention. I was pissed. This fic was the result.


End file.
